Evil Eye: A Novel

The hamsa is a hand-shaped charm that, in many Middle Eastern communities, is worn as protection against the “evil eye.” A person attracts the evil eye by provoking the jealousy of others by seeming to live too comfortable of a life or having a special talent. Both Yara’s mother and grandmother wore the amulet before her, believing in its protective powers, even as they believed that they were suffering from a longstanding family curse. Yara does not share the superstitions of her forebears, but she nonetheless finds herself considering whether she could be attracting the evil eye by, for instance, creating too perfect an image of her life on social media. For her, the hamsa functions as both a sign of pride in her culture and a token of what she inherits from her mother and grandmother: the trauma of the Nakba, the unhappiness of an immigrant wife, and the unarticulated sense of loss made more unbearable by a mother’s unexpected death. The hamsa also marks Yara’s realization that her husband does not know her, even after 10 years. She pleads with him to plan a trip for their anniversary, but his only gift to her is a bracelet with another hamsa charm to match the necklace that she wears—but that he has clearly never asked about.